Where do you think the school is?

Every single child is unique.

They have different abilities and talents, face different challenges and will need varying degrees of help and support to reach their full potential.

But when a child is denied that support, it can be heartbreaking.

Amy was in junior school.

She had sustained huge amounts of physical and emotional bullying.

She was hit, she was punched, she had hands round her throat.

She piled all of her toys up at the top of the stairs and called me and said, Mummy, if I jump now, will this be enough to send me to heaven?

And that's when I started thinking, enough is enough.

This is a huge cry for help and I have to listen and I have to make everybody else listen.

Securing the right education for your child will not only impact on their achievements at school, but will determine their success and happiness for the rest of their lives.

But local authorities can often put you under a lot of pressure to accept the provision that suits them, to suit their own resources, to suit their own budgets.

And really trying to work out what next to do can be very daunting.

It seems like there are lots of challenges and lots of obstacles at every turn.

My team at St Clair's Law specialises in helping parents overcome problems thrown up by the education system.

And in this short film, our experts are here to guide you through the process.

Our aim is to give you a better understanding of your rights, of how to negotiate the system, and more importantly, we want to help you meet your child's unique and special needs.

The first step along this journey is to identify and define the issues affecting your child's progress.

He was two years old at his two year check-up and it was a group session with other children the same age and we noticed that his speech wasn't at the same level as those children.

It was just basic, you know, mummy, daddy, pointing at things, no full structured sentences.

A lot of the children seemed to be speaking in full sentences and that's where the concern was raised for us.

So what are the signs to look out for?

Vida has some expert advice.

A child has a learning disability or difficulty if they find it harder to learn than other children.

So what should you and your child's teachers be looking for?

Progress that is slower than other children of the same age.

Progress that fails to match the child's own individual previous performance and improvement.

A rate of progress that fails to close the gap in attainment between your child and others of the same age.

Or a rate of progress that means the attainment gap between your child and others is widening.

In these circumstances your child may well be in need of special educational provision, either within a mainstream school or within a specialist school.

So you have identified that your child has special educational needs.

What then?

Chris is here to guide us through the next stage.

The next step along the way is the statutory assessment process.

If the local education authority decide to proceed with an assessment they must seek immediate advice from the child, their parents, as well as the local authority's educational, medical and social services as well as any other agency that it considers relevant.

Experts will be brought in to assess your child and give a comprehensive overview of their needs.

These may include educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists.

The process of obtaining this information should take about six weeks from the date the local authority decide to proceed with the assessment.

The local authority should tell you within four weeks of receiving this information whether or not they will proceed to make a statement.

But in many instances getting that assessment done at all can be a battle.

It took Liz many years to persuade her local authority to assess her daughter Amy.

She was born at 26 weeks and she was born weighing 800 grams and shortly after she was born she had a big bleed into her brain.

She was sent home originally to die and then it came to mainstream school and I'm saying she needs extra help.

You're not going to be able to handle her just on what you've got.

It was evident that she was widening in her gap, educationally speaking, and so I asked them to complete a statutory assessment for her and they said no because Amy didn't meet any of the criteria.

They felt strongly that they could manage her needs within the school.

Where there is a disagreement between the parents and the local authority about what is in your child's best interests, getting independent expert advice can be crucial.

It may come down to building a case which challenges the local authority's stance and independent experts can speak to the heart of this and really help your case.

Juanita Hurley is an independent expert in speech and language therapy.

The absolute key thing is that when you ask or instruct an independent expert, the advice you are going to get is totally objective.

We are there purely to assess, diagnose where appropriate, but specify and quantify the needs of that child and that's incredibly important for the process that they are going through.

So let's assume that a statutory assessment has been made by experts.

Surely it's for the local authority now to draw up a plan that reflects those recommendations?

In Wales, the report from the local education authority is called a statement.

In England, its new name is an Education and Healthcare Plan, or EHCP.

This is the report which officially records the special needs of your child and the extra help they need.

But as Zach explains, the statement or plan may not provide all the answers you are looking for.

To make sure a child receives the right support, a plan has to be drafted in a very specific way.

There are three critical areas of the plan, so let's look at each of them.

Section B of a plan, or Part 2 of a statement, must describe all of a young person's needs and how those needs impact on that young person's ability to learn.

The way this section is drafted is very important because if all a young person's needs aren't recorded exactly, then the plan may not provide what is really needed.

Section F, or Part 3, must specify the provision to meet the special educational needs.

The way this part is drafted is absolutely critical.

The wording must be crystal clear and must spell out the provision needed in unequivocal terms.

Section I, or Part 4, is another very important part of the plan.

It records the school that the child or young person should attend.

In conclusion, where your plan or statement is concerned, exact wording is everything.

When we first got Sam's statement, we thought it was okay to do with his particular needs and speech and language needs.

It was only later on that we realised that the statement wasn't worth the paper it was written on, because it wasn't specific as to setting, quantity and who delivered that support to him.

And at the end of the day, it wasn't being delivered.

So what if there's a problem with your child's statement or the plan?

What if it's too vague, doesn't give you the legal entitlement that you want?

What do you do then?

When a disagreement arises over the expert report, in other words, what you believe needs to be put in place to support your child, and what the local education authority is prepared to provide, the case will be taken to a special educational needs tribunal.

Here's Adam to explain.

At the end of the tribunal process, a case will be considered by an independent panel.

Whilst the panel tries to be parent-friendly, it can still feel like an uneven contest.

The mother and father may feel they know their child's needs better than anyone, but they are not educational or medical professionals, and their views only go so far.

That's because the tribunal can only make decisions based on the law and the evidence placed in front of it.

Therefore, parents need to present independent expert evidence to support their case.

I thought that I could do it myself, and I was very wrong.

I didn't realise what I was taking on.

I would say, yes, get an independent expert.

Because we had such a thorough report, and it really delved deeply into what Sam's needs were, what he was going to need, the setting that he needed to be in, the amount of children in a group that it needed to be small and condensed, that's what we needed.

It was very detailed.

Our advice is, don't be afraid to challenge the system.

In total, it took about 10 years to get Amy the right help, the right placement, and the right paperwork to match her.

Proper educational psychology report, visual impairment reports, auditory processing reports, and collating all that information.

She eventually got a statement, an appropriate statement, at the age of 14.

We have seen the school provision and life chances of hundreds of pupils transformed by their parents who have insisted on their child receiving the right help and the right support.

If you're seeing things running through your head, who are you going to call?

Ghostbusters.

Network with other parents who have been through the process.

Get their help and support.

They are an invaluable resource.

Understand the process.

Understand your child's needs.

Understand the resources that are available.

With your determination and resilience, your child can have the education they deserve.

For more information, visit www.fema.gov